MIGRATIONS. 95 



taken place seems not easily accounted for; 

 perhaps stragglers from the great herds, when 

 food grows scarce, may be instrumental to this. 



The Musk Ox, a ruminating animal between 

 the ox and sheep, 1 has the same habit, extending 

 its migratory movements as far as Melville, and 

 other islands of the Polar sea, where it arrives 

 about the middle of May, and going southward 

 towards the end of September, where it has been 

 seen as low as lat. 67 N., which, as Dr. Richard- 

 son states, approaches the northern limit of the 

 Bison : its food, like that of the Rein-deer, called 

 in North America the Caribou, is grass in the 

 summer and lichens in the winter. Its hair is 

 very long, and, as well as that of the Bison, 

 which has been manufactured both in England 

 and America into cloth, might be woven into 

 useful articles. This animal inhabits strictly the 

 country of the Esquimaux, and may be regarded 

 as the gift of a kind Providence to that people, 

 who call it Oomingmak, and not only eat its 

 flesh but also the contents of its stomach, as well 

 as those of the Rein-deer, which they call Nor- 

 rooks, which consisting of lichens and other 

 vegetable substances, as Dr. Richardson remarks, 

 are more easily digested by the human stomach 

 when they are mixed with the salivary and 

 gastric juices of a ruminating animal. 



The wild Rein-deer in North America, in the 



1 Ovibos moschatus. 



